homemade vanilla extract

Way back in January (I think) I announced I was going to get some vanilla beans and make my own vanilla extract. Well, it's been finished for some time, but I haven't gotten around to posting the results yet. So here goes I drained the extremely dark liquid and discarded the vanilla beans. The vanilla extract was extremely strong smelling, mostly of booze. The smell faded away after I left the jar open for about 5 minutes. I poured the extract into 2 canning jars I had purchased just for this experiment. I was a little hesitant to try it, I thought it would knock me on my butt. I figured I'd use it in a recipe instead of sampling it straight from the jar. In my opinion, it made a difference in the brownies and cake. But maybe it's just my imagination, because nobody said "holy Moses, this tastes like vanilla". But that's probably a good thing, I wouldn't want one flavor to overpower the rest. Would I do it again? Yes, and I plan too prior needing the vanilla. I considered doing it now so I will have lots of vanilla extract for holiday baking. I think I would use vodka the next time around. Not that I know using the vodka would be better, just to try out different ways to make vanilla. I want to see if the vodka vanilla works better than the rum vanilla. What would I do differently? I'd make sure I had jars/bottles ready to put the vanilla in. I'd make a note to myself to shake it up every day (I skipped it some days, I forgot). So I would say if you use as much vanilla as I do, making your vanilla is a great alternative.... Here's the basic recipe 5 whole vanilla beans 8 ounces of alcohol (bourbon, rum, vodka - anything that's about 35% alcohol) Take the vanilla beans and split them down the middle. Place vanilla beans in container. Add the booze, seal the bottle and keep it in a dark place for 8 weeks. Shake the bottle every day for a minute. After 8 weeks, the extraction process should be finished. The liquid will be dark. There's some disagreement on what happens to the vanilla beans. Some people re-yse them, making another batch. Others leave the beans in the extract and add a little booze to replace what they used cooking. I tossed mine because they looked mushy and were in small bits and pieces. (that's because I thought if I exposed more vanilla to the booze, it would become vanilla quicker & give a different flavor). So here it is, you can get cracking on those Christmas gifts;)

1/10/10

For New Years' Eve, I made chicken and noodles. Not exactly a traditional dish, but good all the same. I didn't even make a cake. I'm slipping.

I haven't baked much this week. It doesn't make any sense since I have been home (on vacation) this week, but we still have Christmas goodies to eat. I did make some shortbread cookies from
I made them into thumbprint cookies by sticking my thumb in to make a small bowl to hold seedless raspberry jelly. They have disappeared.
The other thing I baked I never baked before was chicken parmigiana pizza, I used the Art Ginsburg recipe in for the thick crust pizza. That worked out pretty well, too. Even my beloved ate the pizza crust and he likes the thin crust. I did use some drippings from the chicken in the pizza dough. It gave it a better flavor.
As for brownies, haven't made them yet. I do plan to make them, I think I will add some Ghiradelli chocolate to the batter. I have found that "blooming" the cocoa in the melted butter before adding it to the batter seems to bring out a deeper chocolate taste. I should try some dutched cocoa to see how that works in the recipe. It will be interesting.